We used to stand there talking to each other with our hips jutted forward, like an awkward teapot. Chatting about hospital bags with smiles that didn’t belong to us.
I never knew I could talk for so long about a bag.
We were nervous.
But we hadn’t said so yet.
In fact we weren’t saying much at all for two women constantly chatting.
There was a lot of nodding.
And some weird disconnect. Maybe because we thought growing humans was all we had in common. Maybe because we were scared. But we talked about the hospital bags some more.
Like it mattered.
And then somewhere after the hospital bags came the nappy bags and the cross over striped tops. We were messaging over poo texture, catching up for play dates where we both just sat on the couch with babies attached and then would occasionally move to the floor to change a nappy. We would find each other online at 2 in the morning, the little green dot of that I wasn’t alone. We would talk about the highs, we would cry over the lows. We would laugh about how we thought birth would be the hardest part. We understood the significance of the first roll over and the sadness of their last feed. We’d remind each-other we were wonderful mothers on those harder days.
It’s the only friendship where you get to know them later, who they were before they were a mum and I’m not talking about their job. It comes out in a Spotify playlist or in the clothes that follow the stretchy waistbands or the swear words that fall out of their mouth that you pleasantly welcome. The friendship where you’ll embrace them when they’re upset before you know their dogs name. All of a sudden you share so much more than a due date.
3 years on and we talk about a lot more than bags, but still the occasional, “this handbag actually works as a nappy bag”.
And sometimes, for a few minutes we just sit in silence and watch the kids play.
Someone who I can sit in silence with and let out the longest breath.
Someone I never knew I needed.
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